Macaroni Cheese
Introduction
This is really here to jog my memory when I'm wondering what we'll have for tea tonight. Everyone knows how to make macaroni cheese but here's my way. It's good vegetarian food too.
Ingredients
The quantities vary with how many you are cooking for (of course) and your taste. This is for two ... well ... about two anyway.
- 250? grams macaroni
- 50 grams butter
- 4 tbspns plain flour
- whole milk - as much as needed
- grated Cheddar cheese - about a handful
grated Parmesan cheese - about 1/3 of the amount of cheddar
- parsley - finely chopped.
salt - just ordinary salt, not sea salt or some other thing. What is this thing with sea salt for heaven's sake? Actually all salt in New Zealand is sea salt, hasn't anyone seen the bloody great salt pans outside Seddon?
- freshly ground black pepper
Directions
Heat a large amount of salted water - it really is important to cook all pasta in a large amount of water - to boiling, and add the pasta. Dried pasta takes exactly ten minutes to cook to al dente.
Melt the butter in a medium pan and add the flour. Stir it until the mixture (roux) becomes "honeycombed". That shows it is cooked. Add a small amount of the milk and whisk it vigorously (one of those metal whisk thingies is good to use) until the mixture is shiny; it never quite gets the right consistency (or worse it will have lumps) if you don't. Continue to add the milk bit by bit until you get it to the consistency you like - I like it about the thickness of cream. Make sure you whip the roux to shininess after each milk addition. Then add all the cheese and whisk it gently until it's incorporated. Add the parsley.
When the pasta is cooked, drain it well, and I mean drain it really well; it is not good to have tubular pasta squishing out water as you eat it - blech! Put the drained pasta in a serving bowl, add a little olive oil and stir and then pour the sauce over the top. Add the parsley, salt and pepper and whatever else your imagination tells you would be good (see variations below) and stir gently and serve.
Variations
You can add all kinds of things to this, fried bits of bacon (bacon is a vegetable, right?), chopped hard boiled eggs (very nice!), tuna fish, chopped sweet pickles, roasted and chopped capsicums, roasted and chopped nuts etc etc.